Isolated

Chapter I

I walked down my street. The mud-caked sidewalk squished under my bare feet and callused soles. Everything was still. It was dark, which of course it always was. About 10 years ago some dude named Steph Hanburg made this huge innovation that with technology we can clear our skies once again. At the time the sun was only hidden behind a thin layer of smog, you could almost see it then. Handburg was a genius.

Was.

Hanburg was so powerful, no one was as high and mighty - not even the government challenged him. His invention - the Pollucid 15 - it was shot into the sky. The smog was being sucked up, but suddenly the strangest thing happened. The "machine", as you people used to call those things, started to shake. And when I mean shake, I don't mean wiggling a tiny bit, I mean it began to have a god damn seizure. It shook to the point where from hundreds of miles away it was noticed from earth too. It stopped suddenly. Apparently the filter only sucked up oxygen particles. Everyone in the area couldn't breath, and now what was the land of the free became the land of the dark and dying. Everyone cried. Everyone prayed and begged for whatever god was up there would put a stop to this. All of this. But that was 10 years ago, and I was 15 at the time. It hadn't mattered now, though. It had become a norm and didn't seem to bother people anymore. We just put on some of the new tech "masks" that purify the air we breath while we are outside. This air has killed people. But sometimes even then we don't give any fucks about it.

I interrupted my train of thoughs to steer my feet away from broken glass. I hadn't seen that stuff in a while. Bottles, cans, everything was so rare nowadays. Humans destroyed natural resources to the point of no return. Now, we use this new thing we call RT (Repornere Terra). It's nothing from the earth, it's man-made and is used for literally everything. It's fuel, it's silverware, energy, you name it. Nothing is quite like it. It is just to replace what we have already ran out of here on earth. That RT is used so much that sometimes we even eat it. And trust me, we don't have a choice. I had been walking to the store to go get some of that artificial food. I had been walking down this same sidewalk every day, every day I have been seeing the same people giving me the same stink eye and the same people shooting me the same questionable gestures. And again, the silence was broken by a hollar of, "Get out of here you young, shit eating fuck face!" I heard a coughing rage following this comment. And telling by her voice, she was one of the many too stubborn to wear a mask. Apparently I had grazed her lawn with my feet while going around that glass. That woman gave me many many birds. The rage in her eyes - at least I think it was by her wrinkled up nose and tone of voice - burned right through me. She had fogged up, cracked glasses. You could could see her eyes through the lenses just as well as you could see the sun. Na da. They looked as if she hadn't washed them in ages. Maybe the smog is what made them do that. But that look - I understood that look in her eyes. Everyone did. Everyone hated young people. Young people hated eachother. We are blamed for all of the adult's mistakes, even if we were only kids when everything went to shit. I think all that was to blame is the growing IQ, power, and wasted resources. But everyone just thinks the new generation is what brought us here. Some people always talk about how "life was probably great 100 years ago", and then the old folks just disagree. They say that life 100 years ago was depressing, that it was full of "sickness" and a "plague." Back when I was in school we learned it was just fine and dandy 100 years ago. Though they seemed pretty restricted on what we knew then... Anyways, I was coming up on the corner of the sidwalk. I crossed the street to the beginning of the next sidewalk, keeping my eyes foreward and not checking for cars. There was no need to. They made vehicles illegal altogether 50 years back. The "carbon footprint" from them got so bad that everyone has to walk. Riding in a car out in public is equal to dealing meth in a police station; no one has the guts to do it.
Finally, I was in sight of the market, I slid into the growing crowd of people of the parking lot waiting impatiently for that market to open. It was open once every 2 weeks. Those vehicle parking lots were too expensive to remove in some spots, so now they just sit there. They sit there with cracks and holes littering them. Sometimes they are even painted with graffiti. They are just slowely and surely rotting away.
The people in the lot weren't talking. They had been silent. The most going on was people checking the time and shifting from foot to foot and heel to toe like they had to use the bathroom real badly. And once that clock hit 3 o'clock in the afternoon, those shifting feet would be tripping and kicking eachother. Getting some food this part of town was a battle to the death, and only some of us would win. I think people over exaggerate when getting into the market. It's not like there are a lot of people here, even if it's in what used to be a huge city. After the Hanburg incident, everyone left America. Now, the polulation is at only 120 million people. Over 200 million people left this place in the span of 10 years - it's crazy. So, what you could imagine was hundreds of people piled into that parking lot. But, to your surprise, it is only about 30-50 people piled into there. And when the doors opened to the market, I was pushed every which way. Entering the market was claustrophobic, and I kept being slammed into the wall before I could successfully make it into the market.
Damn, that was rough.

I had walked through the aisle of bags with labels that said "vegetables" and "fruits" but looked nothing like them. They looked like someone shit in a bag and called it food. Even the drinks were strange. You had to buy a packet of water, or juice, or literally anything. That RT water is mixed with the real stuff and turned into something edible. The real water is toxic, but this mixture is what makes it edible. I had resorted to the juice flavored RT, throwing in a month worth of it into the basket I had been carrying around. And then I grabbed a bag of RT vegetables, fruits, and some of what is supposed to be meat. The stuff I had should hold me until the next time the market opens again. I carried the basket to the register. A femenine, artificial voice greeted me as soon as I got close enough for the motion sensors to go off, "Hello. Please scan your items." I slid the items I bought across the counter of the register. A hologramic light highlighted the object and predicted it perfectly. There was no screen, there was only the voice telling me the information my buy. The feminine voice of the robot came back on, "Your total is:" it's feminine voice was interrupted with a gravely, robotic tone, "$50.62. Please scan your card." I scanned my card, it outlined it with that same, hologramic light. The robot thanked me for shopping as usual, and let me go on with my day. And soon enough I was in the lot, carrying my RT groceries, and on my way back home.